


Lilacs and Spring Rain

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:59:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1642859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's April in Charm City, and it's assuredly the cruelest month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilacs and Spring Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Season Three, roundabouts.   
>  Pairing: Genfic. Pembleton on a case.   
> A/N: the Sip and Bite is real; the European Street Market is not. Various artistic liberties taken with Baltimore neighborhoods as necessary, though I have endeavored to get it right.   
> 
> 
> Written for Aimeek

 

 

I. The Burial of the Dead

The inside of the squad room echoed dully with the sounds of the torrential rain outside. It sheeted off the windows, casting a murky gray light that undulated in indistinct waves against the faded institutional paint. So far the early morning had been quiet, the burgeoning rainswell a white noise that blurred out the absence of ringing phones.

Seated at his pin-neat desk, Frank Pembleton knew that the respite was destined to be short-lived. People were, for the moment, staying indoors--rendered mute and oddly compliant, drained of the sudden homicidal impulse by the hypnotic oppression of the rain. But more so than flowers, that particular tendency never lay dormant for long. He took a swallow of astonishingly bad black coffee and noted the lateness of his partner, Tim Bayliss. Ten past six was fairly usual for Bayliss, but twenty past was starting to be worrisome. Pembleton had just made up his mind to call Bayliss when he dragged in, runnels of water streaming off his trench coat and charcoal-dark smudges underneath his eyes.

"Rough night?" Frank asked, though he couldn't picture Tim doing anything more strenuous than an all-night bingo marathon.

In response, Bayliss broke into a series of wet, hacking coughs that sounded nastily deep. Kay Howard looked over from her desk, brow furrowed in concern, but Pembleton noted that Felton wasn't in yet, either, and guessed that she had plenty of her own worries.

"Whoa, there, cowboy, slow down," Frank said, handing Tim a Kleenex from the box he kept at a right angle to the stapler. "You sure you shouldn't have stayed in bed?"

Bayliss coughed into the Kleenex a couple more times and shrugged off the wet coat. "Couldn't. Have to do the Mears deposition for Danvers."

"Well, just don't hack all over me. I can't afford to get sick."

"I'll keep that in mind," Tim replied dryly. He began to say something else, but it was drowned out by the ringing of the phone, sudden cacophony in the hollow silence.

"I'll get it," Frank said, unsurprised when he heard no protest from the other detectives. He picked up the phone--"Homicide"--and listened intently, jotting down shorthand notations on a yellow legal pad. "All right. We'll be right there."

"Where to?" Bayliss asked, already back into his coat.

"The Harbor. Got ourselves a floater."

Tim looked outside with obvious dismay. "Sure they didn't drown on the sidewalk?"

***

As he rounded the corner, the first thing that Pembleton saw was the white curvature of a woman's foot, the shoe missing, the opaque stocking rendered semitransparent by the rain, impossibly delicate atop the rough cobblestones. Then the rest of the corpse came into view. A middle-aged white woman, petite--possibly five-one, five-two on the outside--lay supine on the ground next to the river. Her hair, an indeterminate shade of brown, was plastered around an unremarkable face. Beneath one open, dull gray eye something had been at her cheek, exposing the alabaster arch of her cheekbone.

The scene was already taped off to ward away the few persistent onlookers. Pembleton saw that they were first to arrive on the scene--the M.E.'s team wasn't there yet. Two uniforms, a man and a woman, stood to the side under umbrellas, securing the area. Bayliss flashed them his badge, but Frank merely nodded--he recognized them both, and they returned the gesture before going back to their conversation.

Pembleton ducked under the tape and knelt down for a closer look. Around the woman's neck, a tarnished gold chain disappeared into the folds of her navy blouse. He reached to move the fabric back and saw a tarnished St. Christopher medal, lightly limned with green.

"St. Christopher?" Bayliss said from over Pembleton's shoulder.

"Didn't do her any good," Pembleton replied, standing up and waving the uniforms over. "We got an i.d.?"

The female beat cop, a petite woman with deep-set lines around her mouth, shook her head. "Nothing on her. She had a string bag knotted around her wrist that stayed put in the water, but any purse she might have had is gone. Bag had six oranges and a receipt from European Street Market. Receipt was dated yesterday."

"Anyone around here see anything?" Bayliss ventured.

"Nah. That kid over there--" the male uniform, an aging black man with WILSON on his name tag, pointed to a skinny preteen, "--was hooking school and saw the body in the water. He got scared and called his mamma and she called 911. No other witnesses."

A nondescript white van pulled up and disgorged the medical examiner's team, who immediately set to work as quickly as possible, as if there could be hope of saving any evidence from the rain.

Bayliss looked at Pembleton, tried in vain to suppress another round of racking coughs. "Next stop Europe?" he finally managed.

"Don't I wish," Pembleton replied, halfway to the squad car already, leaving the dead woman to the swarming black raincoats of the medical examiner's team.

***

It wasn't a far ride, and the European Street Market was far less chic than it sounded. A shabby, concrete block frame with peeling, olive-drab paint, it housed a schizophrenic jumble of Middle Eastern, Chinese, French, and assorted Eastern European foodstuffs. Frank picked up a jar of something repulsively neon-pink and studied it for a moment, unable to determine from either the Chinese characters or the unearthly appearance what precisely it contained. Bayliss caught his eye, pointed towards a bin of oranges stacked haphazardly near the door.

Behind the counter, a rail-thin man with cinnamon skin was studiously ignoring the two detectives. Bayliss stepped up and leaned over the counter, forcing the man to look at him.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" The man's accent was impossible to place, low and musical, but the undercurrent of annoyance was unmistakable.

Bayliss smiled as though he'd heard nothing of the sort. "Homicide. We need to ask you a couple of questions."

"You had a customer yesterday," Pembleton said as he sat the jar aside, "Caucasian woman, five-two, brown hair. Wearing a gray skirt, blue blouse. She bought six oranges. Sound familiar?"

The man shrugged. "I get many customers."

"Really." The word was exquisitely sarcastic on Bayliss' tongue. "Looks like we're the only ones in the store." A renewed fit of coughing caught at him, causing the clerk to pull back in ill-disguised distaste.

"She had a string bag," Pembleton continued. "Now, seems to me that's the sort of thing a regular customer would have. Someone who knows they just need a few oranges, maybe takes it with her every day in case she stops by for a few things on her way home."

"Only she didn't make it home," Tim said, clearing his throat. "We fished her out of the Harbor about an hour ago. If it turns out you do know her, you'll be charged with obstruction of justice."

The man blinked. "It is possible I know this woman. She worked at the Sip and Bite, always late. I believe she would come by after work sometimes. But that is _all_ that I know."

"The Sip and Bite. I practically grew up on their fried egg sandwiches," Bayliss said. "They're open twenty-four hours."

"Cholesterol, here we come," Pembleton said, and they left the alien atmosphere of the market.

***

The Sip and Bite proved to be fruitful. A short conversation with one of the diner's other waitresses revealed that the dead woman was one Anna Taube, a forty-six year old woman who lived with her elderly Polish mother. The waitress, a tired peroxide blonde named Sandy, told the detectives that Anna worked the eleven to seven shift. She didn't often get to chat with Anna, because she came on at seven a.m.--they saw each other, for the most part, in passing. Sandy did know that Anna had a boyfriend who sometimes came in for coffee right before Anna's shift ended and waited for her to get off. Sandy didn't know his name, but had no high opinion of him--"one of those weaselly goombahs, soon kill you as look at you". None of the other waitresses had known his name, either, but Sandy's opinion held true for the majority.

The manager on duty checked personnel records from the back office and gave Pembleton an address some four blocks past the European Street Market, and the name Gemma Taube listed as an emergency contact.

***

The Taube residence was in one of the few run-down public housing developments in Canton that hadn't yet been pushed aside by gentrification. The elevator was out of order, so Pembleton and Bayliss were forced to hike up four flights of stairs to apartment 402.

After the third knock, the door opened an inch and a tiny elderly woman with rheumy black eyes peered out at them from underneath a chain.

"Yes?" she said sharply. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"Are you Gemma Taube?" Bayliss asked.

"Whether I am or whether I'm not, that doesn't answer my questions," the woman said, and she began to shut the door.

Pembleton stuck his hand out and pushed it back open. "We're detectives, ma'am. Homicide." With his other hand he held out his badge for the woman to study. "We're here about your daughter Anna."

The black eyes seemed to sharpen, raking over Pembleton and Bayliss and taking their measure. "I am Mrs. Taube," she said as she unlatched the chain and stepped aside to let them enter.

The apartment was diminutive and dark. A strong odor of boiled cabbage hung thickly in the air, which was so damp that Pembleton was certain he'd see condensation coating the plastic furniture covers. A single lamp burned weakly beside an orange recliner, and a small pile of wadded-up tissues covered a t.v. tray. Mrs. Taube moved with surprising speed to scoop the tissues up and stuff them in the pocket of her frayed purple robe.

"You must excuse me, Detective. I have had this terrible cold for a week this Sunday."

"It's going around," Pembleton said, inclining his head towards Bayliss. "My partner here sounds positively tubercular."

"Then you must let me fix you some tea," Mrs. Taube said, cutting Bayliss' attempt at protest off with a wave of her hand. "I insist."

When Mrs. Taube had gone to the kitchen, Pembleton and Bayliss took the opportunity to study the small living room in greater detail. The walls were of a dark wood paneling that looked like it had been hit with buckshot, a pattern last popular when Johnson was President. Several oil paintings were hung at regular intervals over the sofa, and Pembleton noted with surprise that these were of higher quality than he'd expected. One of them was particularly eye-catching--it showed a bent old man with hollow eyes standing in the center of a bustling city street, looking utterly alone.

"That is a genuine Czapski," Mrs. Taube said proudly as she came back into the living room carrying a tray with a porcelain teapot and three china cups that she deposited on the now-empty t.v. tray. "He was one of Warsaw's finest artists during the war."

"Which war would that be, ma'am?" Bayliss asked, taking the proffered cup of tea and sitting on the crackly sofa. Pembleton took a cup and gave it a tentative sniff--licorice--and joined him.

"The Second. What other war was there?" Mrs. Taube replied. She lowered herself slowly into the recliner. "Now, then. You are here about Anna."

Pembleton sat his tea down untouched. "I'm sorry to have to say this, ma'am, but we believe we found Anna's body this morning in the Harbor. We won't know the cause of death until the M.E. completes his examination, but we will need you to identify the body."

Mrs. Taube seemed to look off into the distance, at a point years and miles away. At length she spoke.

"When she didn't come home last night I knew that she never would." She reached over to a side table and touched a deck of cards. Pembleton saw that they were oversized, with an ornate gold and lapis pattern decorating the backs.

"Oh, yes, I read the cards," Mrs. Taube said in response to Pendleton's raised eyebrows. "It brings a little extra money in, sometimes. And last night I saw it--death by water. The Tower. Ruin." Her voice remained steady, but her eyes grew wetter. "Anna could not swim."

Bayliss took a large swallow of the tea to forestall coughing. "Is there anything you can tell us, Mrs. Taube, that would help us find out who did this to your daughter?"

"And could you tell us about the man she was seeing?" Pembleton said.

A noise like a thin growl emanated from Mrs. Taube's throat. "Tony Cinotti. I told her time and again he was good-for-nothing, but did she listen to me? I saw it in his eyes. A _ciemny typ._ "

"Know where we might find him?" Bayliss asked.

"Anna said he worked for his uncle at Bowling World. Doing what, I don't know." She stood as the detectives did, and though she pulled herself erect, Pembleton thought she looked smaller. "I thought maybe things were going to get better. Anna met someone new last week, but all she said was that he was a good man. So few men are."

Pembleton wanted to be able to offer some words of comfort, but he knew they'd all ring hollow. "Yes, ma'am. Very few."

II. A Game of Chess

"What's the status of Taube?" Gee asked, staring at the red letters underneath Pembleton's name.

"We went down to Bowling World, talked to his uncle, Mike. Said he hadn't been into work since day before yesterday. Was pretty pissed off, said he was going to fire him, nephew or no nephew. Also, we found an open warrant for his arrest for bad checks."

"I take it you've been by his place."

Bayliss, temporarily improved by the tea and a healthy slug of Dayquil, nodded. "A total shitheap. No one there. Toothbrush missing, some empty hangers on the bed. Looks like he packed in a hurry."

Gee stabbed at the board with a finger. "Stay on it. He didn't have the money to get far--probably holed up with some friends."

"We've got an APB out on him. He's bound to screw up sooner or later," Bayliss said.

"Do what you can to make it sooner," Gee said.

***

Two hours later, after a very late and greasy lunch of takeout Chinese, Bayliss was handling the Mears deposition and Pembleton was sitting at his desk chasing a dead end (the waitress, Sandy, had called to tell him she thought Anna sometimes went to Annapolis on the weekends, possibly with a lover, but Mrs. Taube had said that Anna took her to see her sister). The rain had lessened, but not stopped, and he was just considering hitting the streets with Bayliss again when Meldrick Lewis came into the squad room with a bedraggled prostitute in tow.

"Looky here, you got yourselves a break," Lewis said. "This here's one Charlene Williams. She got busted this morning on her way home from work--told the vice cop she heard about the murder and offered to tell some tales about her reg'lar customer, Mr. Tony Cinotti."

***

"My nerves are bad. You got somethin'?" Charlene sat uneasily in the hard plastic chair, picking at scraggly cuticles. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the Box did nothing for her sallow complexion and worn, smeared makeup.

"I can get you a cup of coffee," Bayliss offered with a smile. "Might even be a doughnut out there with all those cops."

"Nothin' stronger? You guys don't keep a nip in your desks?"

Pembleton leaned forward, and his smile was less pleasant. "Why don't you just tell us what you got to say?"

***

As it turned out, Charlene had quite a lot to say. Tony was a regular customer. He usually saw Charlene in the wee hours of the morning, after he'd gotten off work at the bowling alley. Charlene thought it was funny that he'd leave her to go walk his girlfriend home, get her to fix him breakfast, and then he might or might not fuck her with the scent of Charlene still on his cock.

Charlene also said that last week Tony was complaining that he's seen Anna having coffee with some other guy--a bookish man shorter than she was ("big glasses, not much hair"). He'd been pissed, Charlene said, and was going to give Anna "a good talking to."

Most interesting of all, Charlene said that Tony had come to see her the previous day much later than usual. She was already at home, putting her feet up and fixing a bowl of Apple Jacks when Tony showed up, very upset. He hadn't told Charlene what was wrong, but he'd asked her if he could stay with her for a couple of days. When she'd said no, he'd mentioned going to stay with his friend, Ruben Delgazio.

***

III. The Fire Sermon

They picked up Cinotti at Delgazio's place twenty minutes later, a dingy, rat-infested alley walk-up that clearly did double-duty as a crack house. He seemed surprised to see the police, but went quietly enough when they arrested him for the bounced checks. He only kicked up a bit of a fuss when Pembleton wouldn't let him comb his hair first.

IV. Death by Water

Pembleton went down to the morgue alone, leaving Bayliss to type up Charlene's deposition while Tony cooled his heels in the Box. Anna lay on a stainless table, looking deceptively peaceful. Pembleton knew that under the crisp white sheet she was sewn up like a Christmas turkey, her stuffing removed. With her hair dry, except for the harsh ugliness of her exposed cheekbone, she was quite ordinary. Lips too thin, chin a touch too weak to ever manage beautiful, but with a little attention, Pembleton thought she might have been pretty.

"So, what's the verdict?" Pembleton asked the preternaturally cheerful M.E. The little white-haired man never seemed bothered by his job, but Pembleton despised having to visit the morgue. It didn't make sense in a way--the crime scenes, while horrible, didn't really bother him on a visceral level. But the smell of formaldehyde always made Pembleton wish he was somewhere else.

Dr. Scheiner handed Pembleton a crisp sheaf of papers. "Oh, she definitely drowned. Toxicology came back negative for any drugs or poisons, and she registered significant diatoms in her femoral bone marrow."

"Her mother said she couldn't swim," Pembleton said, giving Anna a last sympathetic look before making a hasty retreat from death's realm.

***

When Pembleton and Bayliss entered the Box, Tony was kicked back in his chair, affecting as much cool as he could muster. With his out-of-date haircut and his stained white wifebeater, he looked like a cut-rate cross between Brando and Billy Ray Cyrus.

"We hear you're quite the ladies' man," Bayliss said. "Good-looking guy like you, it must come easy, right? Flash 'em a little smile, buy 'em a gin and tonic, they spread their legs."

Tony gave a little shrug and spread his hands as if to say _whatta ya gonna do?_ "I got no complaints."

Pembleton laughed. "No, I guess not. I mean, damn, man, you got a girlfriend, nice little Catholic girl who won't say boo about you runnin' around, she's just so happy you're givin' her the time of day. 'Course, with all that, I can't figure why you'd spend the money on a whore."

The realization that they'd been talking to Charlene dawned on Tony, and his grin slipped just a little. "A man's got to have a little variety. What's that got to do with bad checks, anyway? That was all a mistake, ya know, I got paid late and--"

"Never mind the checks," Bayliss interrupted as he took one of the chairs across the table. "We want to ask you a few questions about Anna."

"What do y'wanna know about Anna?" Tony said suspiciously. "There's nothing to tell."

Pembleton took the other chair. "We'll be the judge of that. Where were you yesterday morning around seven-thirty?"

Tony shifted in his seat. "I was at the bowling alley. I had to pick up some stuff."

"Is that the best you can do?" Bayliss asked. "Some _stuff_?"

"We already talked to your uncle, Tony," Pembleton said. "We know you never showed up for work yesterday."

"In fact, that may just be the lamest excuse for an alibi we've ever heard," Bayliss said, standing up and allowing the full impact of his six-four frame to loom over Tony. "You're not the sharpest crayon in the box, are you? Yesterday right around that time you were walking Anna home like you usually do. Only she never made it."

Pembleton followed suit, nearly knocking over his chair with the speed he vaulted out of it. "We pulled her out of the river this morning. But you know that already, don't you, Tony?"

"No! I don't know nothin' about it!" Tony protested, unconsciously raising his arms to ward off the combined menace of Bayliss and Pembleton.

"See, we heard that Anna met herself a new guy. Someone clean cut, someone not like yourself--" here Bayliss grabbed the strap of Tony's undershirt--"and we heard you weren't too happy about that."

Pembleton stepped behind Tony, moving into the small space between his chair and the wall. "What's good for the goose not good for the gander, Tony? It's fine for you to be the man about town, but you're just the sort of macho little pissant won't stand for his woman to do the same."

Tony started to stand up, but Pembleton shoved him back down. "It was an accident," he said at last. "I didn't mean to kill her. I just--I just lost my temper a little, ya know? So I shoved her. I didn't mean for her to go in th'river."

"You didn't _mean_ to kill her? She _drowned_ , Tony," Pembleton hissed, lips pulled back. "I bet you knew she couldn't swim, didn't you? I bet you stayed to watch, make sure the job was done right. Did she beg you to pull her out? Did she _beg_ , Tony?" Pembleton's words were low and sibilant, whispered directly against Tony's ear. He could smell the slick weight of Vitalis and sweat against the back of the man's neck. "How hard would it have been to just pull her out?"

Tony turned to look at Pembleton then, and his veneer abruptly crumbled. "I--I don't swim either," he said in a barely audible voice.

Bayliss snorted in disbelief. "You couldn't have called for help?"

"I didn't want to get busted for the checks," Tony said matter-of-factly.

***

On the whiteboard, Pembleton erased the red ink and wrote in _Taube_ in final, flat black.

V. What the Thunder Said

The rain had finally let up for the past couple of hours, though the sky was still leaden gray and the air was wetly cold. Inside the Waterfront, however, there was a measure of warmth. Behind the counter, Lewis was tending bar, and the scent of fried potatoes and yeasty beer and human bodies made a thin veil of comfort.

Pembleton had finally caved in to Bayliss' urgings and joined him (along with Munch and Howard) for a few beers after work. He insisted on ordering milk, however, and the others knew better than to say much about it. Now they were several rounds in, and Howard had left for a dinner date with Danvers. Munch had excused himself to help Lewis with the happy hour rush, leaving Bayliss and Pembleton to preside over a table full of empty pint glasses. Bayliss had started coughing a bit again, but he was just drunk enough not to care. Frank thought about telling Tim to go home, to get some rest, but he had a notion that it was better for Tim to be around people right now; the lost look he sometimes got in his eyes was back, and it made Frank think of wandering in the dark.

"It's so...I don't know. _Unoriginal_?" Bayliss picked at the sodden cardboard of his coaster. "Jealous man kills lover. Same old, same old. Depressing."

"Who said it had to be original?" Pembleton asked. "Things are the way they are. The world goes round and round, and we keep fucking and killing and starting all over again."

"I don't know what she saw in that guy," Bayliss said. He picked up his glass and downed the last of his pint. "Hardworking girl, takes care of her mother, hooking up with a brain-trust leech like that."

"Why does anyone fall in love with a particular person? It's not about making sense. Besides, she met that new guy--maybe she was trying to do better."

Bayliss didn't answer for a moment. "She won't get to, now."

"No, she won't." Pembleton looked at his watch. "Look, I've got to get home. Mary's waiting. You going to be okay?"

"Yeah," Bayliss said, "I'll be fine." He smiled at Pembleton. "Tell Mary I said hi."

"Will do."

The cold hit Frank with a sharp slap as soon as he stepped outside. The temperature had fallen a good ten degrees with sunset, and he pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. He thought about Mary waiting for him in their cozy house, with the good scent of her skin and her cooking (meatloaf tonight, she'd said, his favorite), and he walked towards his car a little faster. It was such a fragile fortress against the ruins of the world outside, but right now he wanted nothing more than to be there.

One drop at first, then two, then a scattering--the rain came down again, hitting Frank's face and sliding off in a chill imitation of human tears.

End.

 

 

 


End file.
